LATE CITY AHMEDABAD, SATURDAY MAY 17, 2014 24 PAGES Rs. 3.00 TheIndianEXPRESS JOURNALISM OF COURAGE DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD I CHANDIGARH I DELHI I KOLKATA I LUCKNOW I MUMBAI I NAGPUR I PUNE I VADODARA Edit & Op-ed PAGES 12, 13 MODI’S MOMENT ALONE ELECTIONS 20 4 THE by Pratap Bhanu Mehta ■ FOR NOW, CENTRIST, SECULAR & PROGRESSIVE VOICES HAVE LOST VERDICT twitter.com/IndianExpress IndianExpress.com facebook.com/IndianExpress AAP FINDS ITS FEET IN PUNJAB, CAPT HOLDS FORT WHO NEXT IN GUJARAT, SUSPENSE CONTINUES AFTER HARYANA SWEEP, BJP EYE ON ASSEMBLY POLLS IN ORISSA, THE BIG STORY: THE RISE AND RISE OFNAVEEN IndianExpress.com/Apps SAFFRONWAVE REACHES DIDI’S LAND ■ PAGES 6,7, 8 GUJARAT ● SPG COVER FOR MODI FAMILY; WIFE LIKELY TO GET IT TOO ● VICTORY DANCE ON STREETS, MUSLIM AREAS WATCH SILENTLY ● CMO MEN MAY FOLLOW MODI MOD Mandate for self-esteem An ordinary yet extraordinary Indian who has been gifted the power to change history. It needs handling with care SHEKHAR GUPTA WE HAD hailed the verdict of 2009 as an affirmation of the rise of an aspirational new India, leaving behind the old politics of grievance. The mandate of 2014 is a logical step forward. Aspirational voters are also impatient, unforgiving, uncluttered and more transactional. You come to them seeking the supreme gift in a democracy, the gift of power to rule over them and the first question they are likely to ask you is, what will you do for me? If you are old-fashioned and are disconcerted by this, you can call this the arrival of India’s selfie generation. But it’s a reality. No time for majority We would, therefore, pre- triumphalism...you fer to hail this as the rise of cannot govern a India’s post-ideological nation as diverse as young generation. And ours if so many of our politics. minorities feel This is a provocative insecure, excluded formulation. It will be con- and unrepresented. tested and, arguably, so. If Good leaders in BJP’s entire Lok Sabha democracies win contingent of 282 does not power but great ones have a single Muslim — learn statesmanship which means a population from power. segment of nearly 15 per cent has found no representation in what is a national wave — can you really call this verdict post-ideological? Isn’t this, on the contrary, a majoritarian assertion, the final victory of the social right, a garv se kaho hum majority hain moment. It would be tempting but avoidable to jump to hasty conclusions yet. For one, Narendra Modi has not used any polarising language or articulated any exclusivist agenda through his campaign. On minorities and foreign policy, his language has been measured and mainstream. We are, of CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 He delivers first single-party majority in 30 years — and turns politics on its head BJP+ 336 BJP 282 (+166) CONG+ 59 CONG 44 (–162) OTHERS 144 Narendra Modi during his victory rally in Vadodara on Friday evening. Modi won the seat by a 5.7-lakh margin. He also won Varanasi. Dec sion 2014 HEARTLAND POWERS MODI Unprecedented sweep gives BJP and allies 104 seats in UP and Bihar; SP, RJD, JD(U) and Cong decimated; BSP vanishes WEST SURGE CRUSHES CONG BJP takes 26 out of 26 in Gujarat, 25 out of 25 in Rajasthan; saffron alliance more than doubles tally, wins 42 in Maharashtra TMC, BJD HOLD ON IN EAST Mamata takes 34 out of 42, but feels Modi wave, Naveen keeps rising in both Assembly and LS, lotus blooms by the Brahmaputra IN NORTH, MARGIN ICING ON CAKE BJP wrested Chandigarh LS seat, with Kirron Kher defeating Congress MP and former railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal Congress headquarters in Delhi, Friday. PLUS MORE COVERAGE ON PAGES INSIDE PAGES BHUPENDRA RANA AIADMK 37 TMC 34 BJD 20 TRS 11 YSRC 9 AAP 4 BJP makes history, Cong routed EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI, MAY 16 RIDING on a wave of anger and frustration with the decade-long UPA government, Narendra Modi Friday led the BJP to an unprecedented victory in the Lok Sabha elections, giving the country the most stable government in the past three decades, with a clear single-party majority. In the process, he also decimated the Congress, which put up its worst-ever performance. “India has won. Bharat ki vijay. Acche din aane wale hain,” tweeted Modi in his first reaction to the election results. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet President Pranab Mukherjee Saturday afternoon to hand over the resignation of his Council of Ministers, completing the formalities for Modi’s ascension as the new PM. The BJP Parliamentary Party is likely to meet on Sunday or Monday to formally elect Modi. His swearing-in next week will mark the end of successive coalition governments since 1989. END OF AN ERA Historic election marks BJP’s pan-Indian rise UNPRECEDENTED LARGEST EVER VOTESHARE The BJP has received 31.9% of votes polled, up sharply from 18.8% in 2009. Its best so far was 25.59%, polled in 1998. MOST VOTES EVER POLLED It has polled 15.9 crore votes, more than double the 7.84 crore it polled in 2009. The previous best was 9.43 The results saw the BJP’s emergence as a pan-India party, 34 years after its inception. It trounced the ruling Congress in Assam, breached the TMC, Left stranglehold in West Bengal and the Dravidian party domination in Tamil Nadu, and left footprints even in Kerala. So comprehensive was the Modi effect that the BJP swept all the seats in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and reduced the ruling Congress to the margins in Maharashtra, crore, which it got in 1998. BIGGEST EVER TALLY IN UP 73, including 2 of ally Apna Dal is the BJP’s best ever, and the best ever by any party since 1977. Its previous best was 58 in 1998, which included 5 seats in Uttarakhand and 1 Independent (Maneka Gandhi) LARGEST VOTESHARE IN UP 42.3%; previous best was 36.49% in Haryana, Assam and Jharkhand. In other states, including Seemandhra and Telangana, the Congress completely ceded its space to regional parties, leaving the door open for further expansion of the BJP. In fact, the only regional parties to hold out against the BJP onslaught on Saturday have all been formerly aligned with the NDA — Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, Naveen Patnaik’s BJD in Orissa and Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. Naveen is 1998. SP has the second biggest share (22.2%), and BSP is next with 19.7%. However, SP has only 5 seats, and BSP none. GUJARAT, RAJASTHAN MAXED No party has won all of Gujarat before. The Congress won 25 out of 26 in the 1984 wave. In Rajasthan, Congress won all 25 seats in 1984; in 1977, the BLD got 24 out of 25. set to return to power for the fourth time in Orissa. While knives are likely to be out in the Congress against the Rahul Gandhi-led Gen Next team that ran the party’s campaign, the known Modi-baiters in the BJP like L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj, humbled by the magnitude of the mandate for Modi, are set to bury the hatchet and adopt conciliatory tones sooner than later. The BJP is also likely to undergo a drastic change organisationally. BJP president Rajnath Singh is reluctant to give up his party post and join the government, but he is said to be under tremendous pressure to join the Modi cabinet. If Singh relents, Amit Shah, who rewrote the BJP’s script in Uttar Pradesh and has a proven record of executing Modi’s vision for the party, could be in the reckoning for the top party post. While the Congress and opposition parties, as expected, sought to attribute the election results on Friday to communal polarisation, support of the youth cutting across caste lines to the BJP throughout the country only indicated the assertion of ‘aspirational votes’ over caste or sectarian considerations. It was evident in Uttar Pradesh by the wipeout of the BSP, whose core Dalit vote bank obviously broke away to vote for Modi. So did Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Yadav vote bank, reducing the party’s strength to one-third of its previous tally in the Lok Sabha. All five of the SP’s winners are Mulayam’s family members. So deep was the disenchantment with the UPA that most of its highprofile ministers bit the dust. Rahul, PM, govt, silence, tickets, campaign...Congress blames them all OINAM ANAND MANOJ C G NEW DELHI, MAY 16 HOURS after the Congress was decimated in the Lok Sabha polls and its tally in the lower house plummeting to a record low of 44, a shellshocked Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi took personal responsibility for its worst showing ever. The party put up a brave face and asserted it would survive. But finger-pointing, if not a full-blown blame-game, has already begun. Dazed Congress leaders rallied around the Nehru-Gandhi family and called for introspection. Key leaders maintained a public silence on the reasons for the defeat, while in private held government leaders responsible. Questions are also being asked about the style of functioning of ‘Team Rahul’, which managed the campaign and ran the party since he became vice-president. “Congress party has done pretty badly. There is a lot for us to think about. As vice-president I hold myself responsible for what has happened,” Rahul said. Sonia too accepted blame as president of the party. “This mandate is clearly against us, our party. We accept politely this decision of voters and respect it. But at the same time, we also hope that the next government will not make any compromise with the unity of Indian society and the interests of the nation,” she said. The blow was so decisive the Congress did not even touch double figures of seats in a single state. Sonia and Rahul head to address the media in Delhi Friday. Party leaders said severe organisational problems and weaknesses and mismanagement of the campaign added to the “mood against the government” fueled by corruption scandals, price rise and disconnect with the people. “The prime minister addressed only three press conferences in 10 years. Isn’t that a reflection of the lack of communication?” asked CWC member Anil Shastri. “At the AICC session in January last year, it was specifically pointed out that we are lagging in communication. But the situation continued. The continuing rise in prices hit the common man. We could not handle properly the issue of corruption as well,” Shastri told The Indian Express. Other leaders blamed everything from Rahul’s reluctance to become the PM candidate, the party’s failure to convey a central message during the campaign, to the sidelining of senior leaders, organisational failure and ticket distribution and called for introspection.

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